Peer pressure, something that everybody has went through in their life. In this story, peer pressure came from Dominick's best friends, Chaney Harrington and Eddie Otero.
Peer pressure played a role in the story by making Dominick dislike his identical twin brother, mainly because Thomas is a better student than Dominick. And the people around Dominick pushed Thomas away, thinking he doesn't belong with their little group. Also, Eugene Savitsky was not welcomed and picked on by all the other kids because he was more mature than the kids his age should be. Therefore, peer pressure has played an important role even at the start of the story. As the story progress, the peer pressure becomes more important everybody except for Dominick.
During the trip to New York, on the bus Dominick followed along his friends to make rude and wise guy remarks to people who wanted to go the washroom.
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Dominick Street, South side. (View of a commercial...His friends made some remarks especially to Thomas after he tripped over someone's leg during his walk down the isle. Thomas got nervous from those remarks, and thought about how people would make fun of him, which caused him to be trapped in the washroom. That made everybody crowd around the portable washroom yelling comments to Thomas on how to open the door and get out safely to continue the journey. With the peer pressure, Thomas got more and more frustrated and started crying as a result of being trapped in there too long.
Without all the peer pressure in the story, there would not have been any sort of conflicts between Dominick and others. This indicates that in real life, many school children conflicts are caused by the people around them, and mostly it's their best friends that lead them into it.
Dominick Street, South side. (View of a commercial...
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